


Laughing Til We Think We'll Die

by BrilliantlyHorrid



Series: I Never Told You Til Just Now [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension, multi part, skoulsonfest2k15, superpower problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/pseuds/BrilliantlyHorrid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a rough day on a mission, Coulson sets out to cheer Skye up. Unfortunately his methods run on the cheesy side. Good thing Skye appreciates cheesy.<br/>"Not-a-date date" prompt for Day 1 of SkoulsonFest!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laughing Til We Think We'll Die

**Author's Note:**

> Could not get it out of my head once I heard this song ("The earth starts quaking?" in a song by AC/DC? Get outta here.) and this ended up being one of what I think will be a 3-4 part series for Skoulson fest. Slow burn, ahead ladies and gents, be ready!

Honestly, his intention was to simply cheer Skye up.

It had been a rough day for the team, and Skye in particular. Coulson let out a deep sigh, which was luckily drowned out by the house band. The bar was dive-y but thankfully not grimey, the patrons running the gamut from older locals to younger tourists. Glancing over at Skye, Phil tried to gauge whether or not her mood had lifted. He dragged his eyes over her back, noticing the stiffness in her shoulders, which were left bare by the gray racerback she wore out.

Trying _not_ to notice the thin sheen of sweat on her skin, Coulson turned back to the bar and took another swig from his beer. The place was definitely warm, the local heat getting some assistance from the crowds and large number of people on the dance floor. Reluctantly, he found himself feeling thankful he had relented and decided on wearing a t-shirt out. Phil worried it would be seen as inappropriate (or frankly, ridiculous) if he wore casual clothes in front of the team, let alone for a non-work-related one-on-one with Skye. Coulson was always incredibly conscious of the way he was perceived, which was helpful as a covert agent but a bit of a hindrance in social settings.

He tended to overthink things.

But choosing practicality over propriety, Phil decided on a basic black t-shirt, which he paired with some jeans and a very clear look of discomfort. Meeting Skye in the hotel lobby, his outfit earned a raise eyebrow, but no comment. _No ‘going casual tonight, Boss?’ Or ‘I thought you slept in a full suit?’_ Skye simply nodded toward the exit, her ponytail swinging with the motion. “Ready to go?”

She certainly wasn’t in the best of spirits, and while Coulson couldn’t blame her, he wished that she was a little less reluctant to be dragged out with him tonight.

Overall, the mission hadn’t even been a complete failure.

***

“The item has been acquired,” May reported over the comms. In the back of the surveillance van, Coulson nodded.

“Good. Morse, Hunter, meet May at the south side of the building, we’ll pick you up on the road outside the perimeter.” He looked pointedly over at Skye, who got the message, climbing back into the driver’s seat from her previous post at the laptop. “We’ll be there in three minutes. Don’t forget that we’re not out of the woods yet. The operative word here is still ‘covert.’” He refrained from punctuating that sentence with ‘ _Hunter_ ,’ but the exasperated sigh on the other end proved that message was too received.

Climbing somewhat-gracefully into the passenger side, Coulson watched Skye start the van and pull it onto the road. “You’d think with his years of being a mercenary, Hunter would be able to jump a fence without feeling the need to embellish,” Skye commented wryly, and Coulson smiled.

“You know, I never want to discourage enthusiasm, but subtlety on a secret mission is usually preferred. I could do without the gymnastics, or even just the ‘ta-da’ at the end.” Skye smiled back and Coulson felt a distinct warmth flood through his chest. It was just such a beautiful ( _Where did that word come from?_ ) sight after everything they had been going through. The loss of Trip, the discovery of Skye’s powers, the time it had taken to gain the strong but imperfect control she had over them. Realizing he had progressed to staring, Coulson looked quickly ahead to the road in front of them.

Things were better, but not perfect. First off, Skye gave little to no resistance to sitting this mission out, settling with working in the van with the Director while it used essentially none of her skills. Fitz or even Simmons would be a viable choice for monitoring the progress of the field agents through the warehouse and driving the van. In the past, Skye would have put up a fight to be out in the field and not coddled with lower-stakes positions. _I guess it’s not being coddled if she’s the one keeping herself in check._ Phil had a grim set to his mouth, frustrated that Skye felt she was a danger to the team.

It wasn’t just this mission, he could see it everywhere. Interacting with Simmons in the lab, looking absurdly small trying to avoid touching anything; like a mouse in a china shop who believed it was a bull. After what Mack had been through in the tunnels, Skye kept her distance from him completely, as if she was worried she would scare him. This seemed to confuse both Mack and Fitz, who for their part were disappointed Skye didn’t seem comfortable around them.

As a favor to Skye, Coulson had agreed to sit in on her training sessions when May suggested it. He assumed it was a request from Skye, as if her hurting May was even within the realm of possibilities. And frankly, if she thought she was capable of losing control and harming _May_ , Phil wasn’t sure what he was meant to do about it. He brought it up to Skye at one point, trying to use humor to get _that look_ off of her face. That guilty, worried look he’d been seeing way too much of. In response to a self-effacing crack about his combat skills, Skye simply swallowed and gave the director a serious look. “You help more than you know.” She walked out at that point, and Phil decided he had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

So, Skye’s easy smile as they drove down a country road? Just the latest in a series of confusing moments for Phil lately.

“Something’s wrong,” Skye’s worried voice pulled Coulson out of his introspection, and he suddenly heard it too. Gunfire.

The comms crackled to life as May muttered, “We’ve been spotted,” and more shots were fired. Without instruction Skye floored it, while Coulson pulled his sidearm out.

“Do you have a vest?” Skye asked, and Coulson eyed the gear in the back of the van, doubting he had time if they needed him out there. He would have to go without. The locks on the van _clicked_ , and Phil found Skye watching him out of the corner of her eye, unmistakably angry. “Yeah, you’re putting the vest on, Sir.” Phil swallowed heavily, realizing with some measure of surprise that he was not exactly annoyed with her for ordering him around. Oh goody, another thing to unpack surrounding his feelings about Skye. He definitely needed more of those. Unbuckling his seat belt he climbed out back to grab his kevlar, this time managing an indignant huff when Skye told him to be careful.

As Skye pulled up to the rendezvous point, Coulson was still fastening the vest. “Want to speed it up a bit boss?” He raised an eyebrow but continued his task, just managing to hold back a start as Skye’s hands appeared and began fastening the remaining buckles. His own hands dropped, and Phil found himself letting Skye do the rest. It was a bizarrely intimate moment; the two of them standing closely in the back of the van, closer than Skye had allowed in recent weeks.

Suddenly self-conscious, silly little concerns started to dart through Phil’s mind. Was he breathing too loudly? Why did he stop? Was she just trying to give him a hand and now wondering why he was letting her do all the work? Really though, was his breathing loud or was it just the close quarters and the fact that his heart was beating noisily in his ear? Appearing to not register his inner turmoil, Skye swiftly finished with the vest. Smiling slightly up at him, she gently ran her hands down from his shoulder to his chest, smoothing out invisible (impossible, with this fabric) wrinkles.

_We’ve been closer than this before_ , Phil thought, recalling the half-dozen or so times he and Skye had embraced. After he half-told her the results of that first search for her parents. After Ward took her. After they found where her father had been. Before he left for San Juan. After he found her. Before she shut him out. Not that he was keeping track of her specifically, he could remember all the times he hugged others. Hunter, never. Bobbi, never. He put an encouraging, warm hand on Simmons’ shoulder once or twice, and he’s sure he hugged May at least twice, once before she flipped him over her shoulder as a “prank.” But he had to acknowledge that his physical contact with Skye could come off as...excessive from an outsider’s point of view.

_If it happens so often, why am I having trouble now?_ They weren’t even touching anymore, Skye had removed her hands after a friendly pat on his shoulders and was now simply standing there. But their eyes were locked, she was in his personal space and he was realizing now how much he had missed that friendly intrusiveness, the way she would burrow herself into his space as if she belonged there. It had been so long, he wasn’t sure how to deal with it, like he had stumbled across a deer in the woods and was hoping not to startle it. Not knowing what he planned to do, just hoping for a few more moments before it darted away. Then a gun went off nearby, and the moment ended, the deer bolted and Skye turned her back on him to grab her own vest.

“You’re joking, right?” He asked, and Skye bit her lip and shrugged.

“Thought if I did it quick enough you wouldn’t notice.” Coulson sighed in relief that she wasn’t set on going out there, not yet, and nodded toward the driver’s seat.

“Stay back here, away from the windows until I call, then get ready to get us out of here, okay?” Skye saluted and opened the van door for him.

“Don’t die out there,” she told him. Coulson saluted back and jumped out of the van, not moving away until he heard it shut behind him.

Moving through the trees between the perimeter and the road, he took stock of the situation. A security team had followed Hunter, Bobbi and May out of the warehouse and they were exchanging gunfire within the fenced in area. Judging from the radio calls they were making, backup was on the way. They had to move fast. Climbing the fence would make him a sitting duck, but the goal was to get the others _out_ , not him _inside_ anyway. Moving closer, Phil was able to shoot an assailant through the chainlink as he aimed his gun at Hunter. At the save, Hunter spotted Coulson and grinned.

“There he is! Come to get us out of here have we?” Turning around quickly Hunter shot another shooter while May and Bobbi had warded off enough of them to get closer to the fence. “Who’s first?” Taking a knee like he was about to boost someone up, Hunter looked up to see the rest of the team staring him down. “Okay, I guess we’re not taking that route.” In the distance, two vehicles exited the warehouse and headed in their direction.

“We’ve got more company on the way,” Coulson said, trying to evaluate the best way out of the situation. Considering that there were still active shooters around them, taking the time to climb the fence would be suicide. The trucks got closer. “Skye, can you take down the fence with the van?” Coulson radioed.

“Maybe don’t destroy our getaway car, Coulson?” May retorted, ducking behind a tree to shield herself from the ever-present gunfire.

“I can do you one better,” Skye answered, and he heard the door to the van slide open.

Phil’s eyes widened and he turned around, ready to tell Skye to _get back in the car,_ but saw the determined look on her face and the words died in his throat. _Let her do this_ , he told himself. Behind him the fence began to shake, and the top seemed to curl in on itself. It almost looked like it was melting, but after weeks of studying what Skye could do and asking Simmons to _please translate_ what she had just told them, Coulson knew that she was simply causing the fence to vibrate so violently the structure was breaking down. It was a strange sort of relief figuring that out, because while Skye still considered it dangerous, at least her power wasn’t just creating earthquakes like they had originally feared. There are only so many things you can do with earthquakes and pretty much all of them are destructive. _‘But this we can work with,_ ’ he told her cheerily. It had taken some time for Skye to see things his way, but she was getting there.

Like tearing a sheet of paper, the fence split down the middle and Hunter, Bobbi and May began to head over to the opening. Coulson turned to look back at Skye with an an encouraging smile. But then it went wrong. Noting the furrow in her brow, Coulson frowned. “Skye?”

“Shit,” she muttered, and the ground began to shake. “No, I had it this time, I just-” A sharp tremor hit, and Phil grabbed onto a nearby tree to keep his balance. Skye noticed him stumble with alarm.

_Dammit_. “Skye, listen to me, you’re fine. Like you said, you’ve got this, you just need to calm down.” On the other side of the fence, Coulson noticed that at least the security team was fleeing, even waving to the oncoming trucks to turn back.

“She scared them off, let’s get out of here,” Bobbi said, and to her credit Coulson could tell she was aiming to be encouraging. But the word choice was lacking, and between that and the swarm of fleeing enemies, Skye became worse. The ground shook harder.

“You’re okay,” Coulson murmured, stumbling carefully toward her. With a stab of fear, he realized that Skye’s hands were shaking too. In fact, all of her was shaking. “You’re holding it in,” he concluded, feeling sick. “Skye you need to stop or you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Can’t,” she told him and as the three field agents carefully climbed through the destroyed fence, Coulson pointed them toward the van.

“Skye, listen to me, you’ll be okay, you just need to-”

“I _can’t_ , someone will get hurt.”

“ _You_ will get hurt, Skye, you need to let it out, _now_.” He hated taking the authoritative tone with Skye, but the energy pent up inside her was now literally bringing her to her knees and Phil was terrified. He took a step closer.

“ _STOP_.” Skye yelled, and placed her palms against the ground. With a resounding _crack_ the ground beneath her split, zig-zagging through the woods in every direction. Bobbi shoved Hunter out of the way of an incoming crack, which opened up a shallow crevice beneath the front of the van. May stealthily dodged a falling tree that had been uprooted by another fissure. Coulson realized with a jolt he was far too close and had lost the footing needed for evasive maneuvers. As he braced himself, Coulson lost his balance and fell onto his back.

When the shaking stopped, and the cracks in the earth halted their advancement, Phil sat up. Skye kneeled on the ground just a few feet away, the epicenter of everything. Taking it all in, Coulson noticed that he had been wrong. The fissures that radiated out from Skye did not completely surround her.

They very precisely tore up the earth in every single direction except one.

His.

***

“The band is pretty good,” Coulson half-yelled over to Skye, who turned in her seat to look at him.

“Why did you bring me here?”

_Cutting right to the chase. Great._ Normally Phil liked to think that he was a straight shooter. He would get right to the point, through the bullshit someone tried to throw at him. Not just in interrogations or on missions, in his personal life too. Even with Audrey, when Fitz had asked, he told him. Pretty much apart from an alien taking over his consciousness intermittently, Phil Coulson was an up front kind of guy.

Apart from _that_ , and his feelings for Skye. Sure, he knew he had feelings, he would be an idiot to deny that. But what were they? Even May had asked at one point, after the San Juan situation wound down. She didn’t bring up Skye’s hug pre-departure, but she didn’t really have to. He had gone down to those caves with no real escape plan. When he found out Trip had disabled all of the bombs, he was incredibly grateful, but the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind when he was down there. He knew they were going to blow it up. Skye knew they were going to blow it up, if not at that exact moment, but she had planned the op and knew what the endgame was. But she had gone down there anyway, to stop more destruction.

He had gone down there for her. Not to pull her out of there, he knew they didn’t have time for that. Going through the possible outcomes he had at the time, his best-case scenario was Skye keeping the obelisk from the temple and him getting to her before everything came crashing down. He knew that at the time, hoped deeply that would be the end, but it was only looking at it in retrospect that he noticed how it looked pretty...suspect.

Of course he loved Skye. He knew that, May knew that, Skye must know that at this point, and even Lance Hunter seemed not only know, but be in favor of it. But _how_? In what way? The first time Cal told Coulson he wasn’t her father, he was _SHIELD_ , he hardly thought anything of it. _Of course I’m not_ , he thought. There were a few other things to focus on at that time. Trip’s injury, Fitz assembling the transceiver, and the madman himself. Saying “SHIELD” with so much contempt and hatred, refusing to acknowledge Skye’s name. So, this man asserting his position as Skye’s father? Not unusual.

It was the _second_ time, when he was being pummeled to death by said maniac, that Phil started to see a pattern. _Why does this guy keep insisting I’m not her father? Did I say something? Did Ward or Raina say something?_ It was absurd, considering the more important matters at stake, but it bothered him, as Skye’s father repeatedly punched him in the face.

Did he come across as fatherly? That didn’t seem right. He may not be the best judge when it comes to good fathers, but Coulson was certain that’s not how he felt toward Skye.

So how did he feel? Was the love he had for her simply friendship? He loved May, but in a different way. He cared about everyone on his team, but there was no one else apart from Skye that he cared for, _agonized_ _over_ to that degree. Phil liked to think he was a good man, and that a good man would have gone down into those tunnel for any member of his team. But he wasn’t _that_ good. Skye was the anomaly, the driving force for him to go down there, to figure this out and to rebuild SHIELD.

_I guess that should answer the question then, shouldn’t it?_ He thought wryly. The fact that he not only cared about Skye’s future, but _their_ future _together_? That pretty much said it all.

“I thought you needed a break,” he finally answered, shrugging. “You spent some time in Austin, so I figured since we were down south for a night you might be into this whole...scene? It’s not bad, not exactly my taste but I have to say it’s growing on me.” _Rambling, Phil._

“Really.” Skye stared at him, narrowing those overly perceptive eyes. “You thought this was my ‘scene,’ _because_ …?”

Coulson shrugged, and swiveled his bar chair to look out at the crowd. Skye did the same. “Well,” he waved vaguely with his beer in the direction of a nearby table of young men and women who could have been either 21 or 17. “You were here for your late teens and early twenties, so I assume you, like any other rebellious kid would go to the bars even before it was legal. Of course, _unlike_ any other rebellious kids you were probably capable of creating exemplary fake IDs at an early age.”

Skye quirked her mouth at the compliment, but leaned over, questioning him. “So you assume I was a bar hopper?”

Recalling that Skye had referred to her time pre- and early-Miles Lydon as “a lot messed up,” Coulson knew he had to clarify.

“You said you won your laptop in a bet. The laptop itself was just your basic notebook, but new, so you could have won it from a college student who got cocky. You didn’t go to college, so you probably didn’t get it on a campus, so a local watering hole with a younger crowd? Perfect place to find your mark.” Skye tilted her head curiously, but the stiffness in her posture at his perceived assumption about her past drinking habits had loosened slightly. He hated to admit it, but Phil felt a little thrill that she looked, dare he say it? Impressed.

“My mark?” She asked. “That’s an interesting word choice.”

“Well, you wouldn’t enter into a bet you thought you might lose, especially since the stakes were probably high on both ends.” Choosing not to dwell on what Skye might have put on the line to win a computer, Coulson went on. “You didn’t own a laptop, so the parameters of the bet couldn’t have been technology based. Unless you used someone else’s machine, but I can’t see you relying on another person’s tech for something so important.”

Skye smiled at that. “Okay, Mr. Profiler man, what was the bet then?” Smiling back, Coulson nodded toward the pool tables.

“Simmons once said you were ‘extraordinary’ at pool, and Fitz seemed pretty put out at the time, so I can see you being a shark, no problem.” Skye took a sip of her beer, shrugging. Not giving him the point. He dug a little deeper. “I saw you drink Hunter under the table a couple of weeks ago, so drinking contest is another option.”

Skye’s unaffected mask faltered for a split second, revealing a mix of pride and totally caught. _Bingo_. Perhaps unwisely, he continued. “Not that you would rely on it, but a pretty girl challenging you to a drinking contest? Something tells me that down here a guy would put a lot on the line for a chance like that.”

Maybe it was an unintentional slip, calling her ‘pretty.’ Or maybe it was completely intentional. First off, if Coulson was going to let slip something about how he saw Skye, ‘pretty’ would not begin to even scratch the surface. Even on a purely physical, objective level, Skye was a gorgeous girl. Even without her trademark ‘walking into the room like she owned the place’ stride tonight, pretty much every head had turned when they came through the door, and it certainly wasn’t because of him. _Although this shirt is sort of tight._

And then, if you were lucky enough to get deeper than that, lucky enough to know Skye, she only became more stunning.

So no, ‘pretty’ would not be the first thing to come to mind when describing the girl next to him. ‘Pretty’ was an attempt to get a reaction. It was the verbal version of the stupid shirt he was wearing tonight. It was another plea, ‘can we please play the game again? Can things be normal again?’ But he got nothing. Not a raised eyebrow, not a nervous laugh, not --not that he would hold his breath for this one-- a blush on her cheeks.

Skye simply raised her bottle in a ‘cheers’ gesture. “Looks like you have me all figured out, Coulson.”

_Hardly_.

“Remember? You’re the one person I can’t figure out, Skye.” That got a reaction, one that was difficult for Phil to make out. Skye almost looked uncomfortable, more so than when her boss had been speculating about her former life as a teenaged who knows what. Was she annoyed? Flattered? Not buying it? Part of him wanted to interpret the look in her eyes as happy, but he didn’t want to hold out any hopes. Onstage, the music stopped, and the people around them began to cheer and clap. The band had announced they were taking a break and would begin their next set in about ten minutes, and any requests could be written on the clipboard by the end of the bar.

“I’ll be right back.”

***

_This is stupid._ Coulson had returned to his seat, and was currently deciding whether or not he regretted the move he just made. _There are really only three outcomes: either she won’t get it at all, so no harm, no foul, she’ll get it and be upset, or she’ll get it and think it’s funny._ He could always deny it was him, but he had never been great at keeping things from Skye and didn’t plan on doing that again anytime soon.

The band returned to the stage, and Coulson found himself feeling oddly nervous. The first song they came back with was not his request, so he breathed a little sigh of relief. _Maybe they won’t even play it_ , he thought. It was well-known and a crowd pleaser, but challenging enough that not every band would be comfortable covering it. These guys were pretty good, but considering the length of the request list, Coulson thought maybe he should consider the possibility they wouldn’t even play it.

Sitting in somewhat-companionable silence, Skye and Coulson both faced the stage. Phil wanted to talk more, but didn’t want to push. He and Skye still had yet to talk about what happened that day, and all he wanted to do was reassure her that it was fine. Really, it was more than fine. No one on the team got hurt, and while Skye did lose control to a degree, she had been able to contain the effect somewhat. _Or at least in one direction_. Phil frowned slightly. He should probably address that too. The team thankfully had not made a big deal about it, although clearly they had all noticed. Their focus had been on getting the exhausted Skye into the van and getting out of there, and her mood when she finally awoke was not one that permitted questions.

Phil was drawn out of his thoughts as some familiar chords hit his ears. _Here we go_. Watching Skye carefully, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary, though when the drums kicked in he saw her head perk up slightly with recognition. He tried not to dwell on the fact that her familiarity with the song was probably as an old classic, a throwback played at bars like these where kids would reminisce hearing it from their parents’ old record collections. _Ugh_. He took another drink.

The song was a bit dirtier than he remembered, or at least he hadn’t really thought anything of it. Now that he had chosen it with Skye in mind though, well, he hoped if she did realize what he had done, she wouldn’t focus on the details like the subject’s ‘American thighs.’

 

_“She told me to come but I was already there,”_

 

_Oh god._

The the lead-in to the chorus began, Phil saw Skye freeze. She absolutely knew, no question.

 

_“Cause the walls start shaking_

_The earth was quaking_

_My mind was aching_

_And we were making it”_

_You, shook me all night long"_

 

She slowly turned around, and once again the Director was bracing himself. He put on a little abashed smile, holding in a sigh of relief when Skye didn’t look angry or upset. She wasn’t laughing, but _almost_. And that thrilled him.

“Really?”

“I thought you might find it funny,” he shrugged, and Skye shook her head in an amiable ‘I can’t believe you,’ way that gave him damn near butterflies. Then she stood up.

“Come on,” she said, holding out a hand and laughing at his incredulous face. “You want to give me a break? Let’s go.”

“Skye I’m not sure that’s-”

“Appropriate? Yeah, okay,” she rolled her eyes and frankly Coulson couldn’t blame her. He sighed, perhaps over-dramatically, and relented, placing his hand in hers. Sincerely hoping she didn’t expect to watch him dance, Coulson was relieved when she simply stopped at the edge of the dance floor and placed her other hand loosely on his shoulder.

Skye looked up at him questioningly now, with a bit of that confidence gone, as if asking ‘Is this okay?’ Smiling, Coulson placed his other hand on her waist to reassure her, and earned a grin in the process. The two of them moved into a simple, playfully swaying two step, _nothing overly formal or weird,_ Coulson imagined they both told themselves. “This is super dorky, you know that, right?” Skye asked.

“I prefer to think of it as clever,” Coulson replied. They moved easily, watching the others around them. He had been right, this song was always a crowd pleaser.

“This song is kind of dirty,” Skye observed, baiting him.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s a good choice though,” she conceded, nodding toward the dancing folks around them. “Everyone likes it.”

“Of course they do, it’s an excellent song,” Coulson said, matter-of-factly.

Skye smiled. “Is this one in your extensive record collection somewhere?”

Phil tilted his head. “Possibly? I’d have to check, I haven’t heard this one in a while.”

That’s a lie. The truth was, he had been looking for some levity post- San Juan and had pulled out some classic rock albums one night when the majority of agents were either out on a mission or far enough from his office that he wouldn’t be disturbed. Coulson did prefer to keep up an image of the detached director when he was at the Playground, so blasting AC/DC didn’t exactly work with that. When the song came on, he inexplicably started laughing.

Whether it was genuine humor at the situation or a defense mechanism against how closely it hit at a time when Skye was still struggling to control the power that had been forced onto her, Phil wasn’t sure. He let it play through once before taking the whole record off the player and shoving it in a locked desk drawer.

“So AC likes AC/DC? Or _DC_ likes AC/DC I guess.” Skye said, then laughed curiously at the words that just came out of her mouth. Coulson saw the connection there too, and chose to smile stiffly rather than address it.

_Like pieces to a puzzle, huh?_ Would the connections ever stop showing up between them, no matter how small? He hoped not.

A new song had begun, a slower one, so when neither of them made a move to leave, Skye carefully moved her hand, so that her arm was now loosely wrapped around his shoulders. Meeting her daring gesture (because that’s what it was, for both of them: making any move to define their relationship had this intangible risk surrounding it, like one wrong move would ruin everything they already had) with one of his own, Coulson rested his head on top of hers. While he could now feel her face, her temple and cheekbone touching his chin, Phil could no longer see it, which oddly took some of the pressure off. It might be easier for her to talk to him now that he wasn’t staring her in the face.

“I talked to May about it,” Skye said, and Phil felt his eyebrows shoot up his forehead.

_I didn’t think it would be that easy._

“About your powers?” He asked carefully, not wanting to say the wrong thing.

“About them. And you.”

Coulson swallowed heavily, then tried to come to his senses. She meant about his effect on her powers, of course. Not like she and May were spending their training sessions talking about him. (In fact, he would desperately prefer to not be a topic of conversation for them.)

“That’s why she had me sit in on your sessions,” Coulson concluded. “Because…” He had to let her fill in the blanks here. Skye moved her hand slowly, across his shoulders and down until it rested on his chest, right on his scar. Suppressing a sigh, Phil tightened his arm around her waist, pulling her closer.

“At first I thought of it as something alien inside me--not trying to make a pun here,” she muttered, and he just nodded, knowing she could feel the motion. “Like, it was something foreign that I couldn’t control. Every time they acted up, I felt like this separate entity was taking over and I couldn’t stop it.” This time Phil nodded again, squeezing the hand he held with his own encouragingly.

That was a feeling he knew very well.

“But that’s not what was happening,” Skye said, pulling away slightly to look up at him. “I realized that around you, it behaved differently. And I told May, and she said that it wasn’t an _it_ , it was _me_. I was controlling it, somehow, even if I didn’t know it. Obviously, I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she said emphatically, those big brown eyes of hers wet, but not crying.

“But if you can somehow stop it from affecting me, that means you can learn to keep it from hurting the others. You can control it.”

Skye nodded, then stopped and shook her head. “Yeah, but-- I need to stop thinking about it like that. May said that if I keep treating it as something else, I’ll keep pushing away any control I have. It’s _me_. _I’m_ summoning the energy to start it, _I’m_ deciding where it goes, and I haven’t been able to figure out how yet, but _I’m_ stopping it from hurting you.”

Once again, Phil was reminded how thankful he was for Melinda May. Not only had she been a huge help to Skye after the trauma of losing Trip, but she was a master at focus and control. Even, he realized now, with something she had never experienced, apart from her time with the Asgardian staff. When she first told Phil--and it _was_ telling him, _not_ asking-- that he needed to sit in on Skye’s training sessions, he was confused, but trusted May knew what she was doing. She wasn’t coddling Skye and she wasn’t asking for backup. She knew Coulson was the variable in Skye controlling her powers, so she brought him into play.

“Man, I’m glad May is on our side,” he let out, and Skye looked a bit confused by the train of thought, but agreed. There were a few things he could ask, Phil thought. ‘Why me,’ was a major one, but even he knew asking would be stupid at this point. So he decided to go a different route, with something equally pressing but far more concerning. “How often have you been holding it in?”

Skye looked away, and that more than anything told him the answer was a lot. “ _Skye_ ,” he sighed, stopping their movement. _How many songs have we danced through?_

“I know, I _know_ , I just--once I start, I never know if I’m going to break a few glasses or bring the roof down on our heads. So I just...don’t let it get out.” She had a grim set to her mouth, and Coulson pulled away just enough to get her to look at him fully.

“It looks like it hurts,” he said. She nodded.

“It does.”

Phil cursed under his breath, and Skye’s eyes widened. “I’m not trying to make you worry about me, Coulson, that’s not the point of this. This is something I need to learn how to control, and right now, keeping it inside is one of the only ways I can do that.” She stared up at him seriously. “But I’m working on another way, so it’s not forever.”

“I don’t like seeing you in pain,” Coulson told her, rather pathetic, and Skye smiled at him kindly.

“Well, then help me figure out to control it, Sir.” Around them the crowd on the dance floor cheered, the band had wrapped up another song. Skye looked to the stage, puzzled, like she had just woken up.

_Apparently she lost track of time too._ Running his eyes over her face, Coulson recognized how important to him this woman was. He knew there might not be other nights like this one, where things are just open and ambiguous between them, and tomorrow might be a return to business as usual. But things were already changing. Whether they were in the field on a mission or sitting back at the Playground, their interactions were colored with something different. _Possibility_. Nothing overt, but a current under the surface, pulling them toward each other. They had always been connected in a way, since he met her he had been drawn to Skye.

But now he knew it could be _leading somewhere._ They weren’t just in adjacent orbits, getting closer but never colliding. The path they were on was coming to a head, he knew that now. And he wouldn’t push it, but he would keep looking toward the day they finally confronted it and addressed it head-on. _Maybe after we save the world. Or during._

“How can I help?” He asked, and Skye looked thoughtful, before pulling out of their quasi-embrace. She kept that hold on his hand though, the one they had somehow maintained this whole time like a lifeline, pulling him with her as she exited the dance floor.

“Just stay close to me.”


End file.
